Okay, you’ve invited three friends over for dinner. One is vegan, one is gluten-free and the other only eats raw food. Planning an entrée that satisfies everyone is probably already enough to make you break out in hives. But dessert? This gang will be lucky to get an apple!

But wait. Earth Café – based in California, of course – saves the day with their amazing cheesecake. Vegan? Check. Gluten-free? Yep. Raw? Really? Yes. And edible? Very much so.

The folks at Earth Café recently sent me four flavors of their raw vegan cheesecake to sample. Here’s one of their secrets: whatever the flavor is supposed to be, make that your main ingredient. So the “strawberry fields forever” is mainly strawberries, and the “banana dream cream” is mostly bananas. Fortunately the “Who’s your daddy?” is not made of fathers – which wouldn’t be vegan – but of carob.

Instead of dairy, these cheesecakes are made with soaked nuts, coconut and coconut butter. So they’re not a low fat dessert. Each slice contains about 400 calories, including 30 grams of fat. They’re sweetened with agave. Between agave and the fruit, you’ll ingest about 15 grams of sugar per slice.

Earth Café has done an impressive job with its distribution. Any company that manages to supply raw, vegan desserts to stores in North Dakota knows what it’s doing.

You can try 10 different flavors of cheesecake. Like most prepared raw foods, slices are pricey, retailing for $5.99 each. You can order a full cheesecake – that’s eight slices – online for $34.99.

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Teresa Bergen lives in Portland, Oregon, where she writes about health, fitness, travel and the arts. She’s the author of Vegetarian Asia Travel Guide. You can learn more about her at www.teresabergen.com or contact her at teresa.bergen@gmail.com.